ETHIOPIAN COOPERATIVES 15
Table 2.1 Households reporting membership in traditional institutions Percentage of
Institution sampled households
Traditional institutions Idir (burial society)
Iquob (rotating savings and credit association) Other credit and savings association
Mahaber (traditional collective-action organization) Senbete (church group) Mosque group Other
Formal cooperative Households reporting membership in at least one traditional institution Source: Based on data from ESCS (2005).
that a formal cooperative movement began in the country, and only in 1961 did the imperial government introduce the first formal proclamation on coop- eratives that gave rise to the institution in its modern sense (Couture et al. 2002; Kodama 2007).
During the imperial era, cooperatives were primarily created to support the production of high-value agricultural exports, such as coffee. Membership consisted of farmers with large landholdings and tended to exclude small- holders. By 1974, the end of the imperial era, only 149 cooperatives existed in the entire country, including 94 multipurpose, 19 savings and credit, 19 con- sumer, and 17 handicraft cooperatives (Lelisa 2000, cited in Lemma 2008). The military (Derg) regime that ruled Ethiopia from 1974 to 1991 introduced a new type of cooperative, based on more Marxist principles aimed at ending capitalist exploitation of the peasantry (Rahmato 1990; Kodama 2007). During this period, the government established a massive network of cooperatives to organize peasants, manage production and purchasing, and sell inputs and consumer goods to members. At its height, the network included more than 7,700 primary (that is, community-level) cooperatives and 4.8 million mem- bers (Table 2.2).
There were two main types of farmers’ cooperative during the Derg: service cooperatives and producer cooperatives. The former were charged with managing input supply, credit, output purchasing, milling services, and the sale of consumer goods for smallholders. The latter were collective production units that were ultimately found to be one-third less produc- tive than individual farms (Rahmato 1994b; Kodama 2007). Both types of cooperatives played a central role, alongside the kebele administration, in levying and collecting taxes from smallholders, extending state control to the
42.2 6.9 0.3 3.8 2.8 0.1 0.3 9.1
47.0
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